Prime Time: The Client (1994)

Susan Sarandon, Tommy Lee Jones, Brad Renfro, Mary-Louise Parker, Anthony LaPaglia, J. T. Walsh, Anthony Edwards, Will Patton, Bradley Whitford, Anthony Heald, Kim Coates, William H. Macy, Ossie Davis, William Sanderson, and Dan Castellaneta. That list of names covers almost everyone you might recognise in yet another John Grisham adaptation making use of a stacked cast and a star director. The star director this time around is Joel Schumacher, which allows The Client to feel like a pleasingly different beast to the Grisham-based blockbusters of the previous year.

Brad Renfro plays Mark Sway, a young boy who ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time. There's a man about to kill himself, but he decides to confess one or two disturbing details to Mark before he does the deed. This puts Mark in a very difficult position when the DA figures that they can use his testimony to take down a powerful crime family. Trying to figure out how to avoid getting his family, and himself, killed, as well as avoiding any charges himself for obstruction of justice or perjury, Mark ends up hiring an attorney named Reggie Love (Sarandon). Reggie wants to do her best by Mark, but Mark expects all attorneys to be untrustworthy and manipulative. Like the team headed up by Roy Foltrigg (Tommy Lee Jones).

Adapted from page to screen by Akiva Goldsman and Robert Getchell, The Client is a decent mix of legalese and standard thrills, especially in the second half. The premise is very familiar, but the fact that the main witness is a street-smart kid who automatically distrusts most adults helps to make it a bit more compelling than many other films in the same vein. It also helps that Renfro is so good in his first film role (and he would build up one hell of an interesting filmography before his untimely death in 2008).

It's easy to forget how good Schumacher could be at the old directing lark, especially when his more memorable works aren't always memorable for the right reasons, but, like it or not, he would often let his directing style be dictated by the material. This is a restrained and straightforward tale (well . . . compared to some other Schumacher films anyway) and he treats it just so.

LaPaglia isn't restrained though. Neither are Coates or Patton. They're almost ridiculous in how the act around the young lead at times, but that adds some fun to what could have otherwise been a bit too dull and earnest. The heart of the film is Renfro and Sarandon, and both work so well together that they make it hard to be critical of the fact that Jones, Parker, Edwards, Davis, and a number of other great talents have relatively little screentime. That's not really a problem for Jones anyway, who can make use of the smallest amount of screentime to create an unforgettably strong impression, and every one of the supporting players benefits from the glow reflected from the stars shining as brightly as possible.

I wouldn't be disappointed if I never watched The Client again, but I certainly wasn't disappointed to spend a couple of hours rewatching it this week. All I could remember about it were the leads and how well they worked together, which turns out to still be the most memorable thing about it. It's a perfectly enjoyable and polished thriller, but it doesn't do enough to be anything more than that.

7/10

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Mubi Monday: Minari (2020)

Although Minari is an American drama, it is all about the experience of South Korean immigrants trying to establish their life in the USA. Which means I may well get some of the name formatting wrong, once again, despite trying my best to double-check the details available to me.

Steven Yeun is Jacob Yi, Han Ye-ri is his wife, Monica, and they have two young children, David (Alan Kim) and Anne (Noel Kate Cho). They will also soon be joined by Soon-ja (Youn Yuh-jung), Monica's mother who will hopefully be able to look after the children while the hard work is done that should turn their house into a home, and also hopefully turn their land into something able to grow produce on. It won't be a smooth journey, but it will hopefully be a journey that the whole family experience together.

Written and directed by Lee Isaac Chung, based on his own childhood, Minari is one of those films that makes use of specifics and personal details to deliver something that feels universal and identifiable. While it's about the immigrant experience, and about the challenges facing them, it's also just about parents doing their best to ensure that each subsequent generation has a better starting point in life than the previous one. 

While the cast all do fantastic work, with young Kim being an absolute delight, and Yeun showing once again that he is yet to be given due credit for his many brilliant performances over the last decade or so, this is all about the delicate exploration of people who have to consider the value of the sacrifices made in pursuit of a better life. While there's a monetary cost involved, the more difficult moments come when loved ones may be negatively impacted by choices seemingly made for the greater good. 

As well as those mentioned, Will Patton delivers a great performance, portraying a Korean War veteran who believes that it's a great sign that he has been placed to potentially help the family. His character helps to highlight the ways in which the world keeps changing, and how it's very easy to find commonality with people simply hoping to make a good life for their family.

There's a lot of strain and stress here, and it's always clear that Jacob has gambled everything on this one place, and his plans for it, but Chung shows that the risks are, despite moments of doubt, worth the reward. The family is together, there are happier times lying ahead for them, and they can feel as if they have made some progress as soon as they decided to make their home in America. Whether sexing chickens, trying to find a good spot for a water well, struggling to sell any produce, or figuring out how to deal with health problems, Jacob and Monica are always motivated by family and love. And that counts for a hell of a lot, even in the face of overwhelming odds trying to fill them with doubt. 

9/10

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Mubi Monday: Variety (1983)

I'm not quite sure how much I enjoyed Variety, but I guess there's a clue in how much I hope to now check out other movies from director Bette Gordon (who also came up with the story idea, which was then shaped into full film form by Kathy Acker, Jerry Delamater, and Peter Koper, with Nancy Reilly also contributing). There's something about her style, although it's maybe just the time period and setting, that calls to mind the excellent work of Lizzie Borden, who delivered some of her best work in the early 1980s.

This is the story of Christine (Sandy McLeod), a young woman who ends up taking a job in the ticket kiosk of a porn theatre. She is looked after by her manager, Jose (Luis Guzman), and initially does a fine job, but it's not long until she starts to become more and more curious about the content being shown on the screen, and she starts to become equally curious about a customer (Louie, played by Richard M. Davidson) she believes may be connected to some major criminal organisation. 

Deftly mixing explorations of personal economics with a little bit of paranoia and a lot of sexual exploration, Variety is one of those movies that also works as a great time capsule. There's not really that much going on, the stakes never feel very high, but it becomes something intriguing and thrilling because of the journey that Christine goes on. Gordon doesn't necessarily decide to take things in any one specific direction (this could be darker, it could be sexier, it could be turned into an outright comedy, etc.), but the strangely loose and seemingly wandering nature of the whole thing makes it feel more grounded in reality.

McLeod isn't bad in the lead role, although it's not a surprise to see that she didn't go on to do much in front of the camera after this, and the same can be said of Davidson, who has the easier job of simply being a bit suave and mysterious for a few scenes. There's more fun to be had in seeing Guzman in an early role, as well as spotting the likes of Will Patton and Mark Boone Junior enjoying some screentime.

Although it's about a very specific kind of cinema, Variety is still about cinema. It's about what is on the big screen affecting the thoughts and narratives we create in our own minds, and it's about the loyal fans who choose to spend their time in a dark room connecting with fictional characters, even if they cannot always easily connect with anyone around them. Yes, it's also about sex, and there's a mystery element at the heart of things, but . . . a lot of cinema is about sex, even when it doesn't appear to be about sex.

8/10

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The Puppet Masters (1994)

Although very similar to The Body Snatchers, The Puppet Masters is actually based on a Robert A. Heinlein book that came along a few years before Jack Finney's seminal work. It's a fun film, but also one that is very much a product of its time, that being the early to mid-'90s, when The X-Files had made us all aware of how government agencies move in and deal with potential alien threats.

Things start moving pretty quickly, with head guy Andrew Nivens (Donald Sutherland), and agents Sam, who is also his son (played by Eric Thal), Mary (Julie Warner), and Jarvis (Richard Belzer) among the first to investigate some strange events in a small town. It's an alien invasion, with the little parasitic creatures attaching themselves to people and controlling them, making them part of a hive mind. In a race to stop the little buggers from taking over the world, Andrew and co. have to find out exactly how they work, and find out what is the most effective weapon against them. Because once they attach to a host, removing them can be a very tricky, and life-threatening, operation.

Written by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, a successful writing duo who went on to craft a number of massive box office hits, The Puppet Masters also had many other people trying to help finalise the script, including director Stuart Orme and David S. Goyer. The script remains weak, certainly in a middle act that moves between familiar “body hopping” moments and attempts to explain the full M. O. of the creatures, but it still has enough fun contained within it to keep things just about entertaining enough in between the more exciting story beats.

Helped by a cast that also includes Keith David, Yaphet Kotto, Will Patton, and some other familiar faces, Orme gives viewers something that absolutely, for better or worse, plays out like a feature-length TV episode of something from this time (as well as The X-Files, you also had Dark Skies and First Wave, the latter two shows coming along after this film). Basically, if you like that aesthetic then you will find enough to like here. The look of the whole thing is quite flat, but there are some decent practical effects, although some aren’t so decent, and plenty of people in suits looking serious and commanding soldiers to contain/destroy a major threat. 

Sutherland is very good in his role, and he provides a connective tissue between this and a previous incarnation of Finney’s tale (thanks to his work in the ‘70s version, consciously or subconsciously helping people to forget THIS is actually Heinlein’s story), but he’s left a little bit out on his own in scenes that have him working with Thal and Warner. It isn’t that Thal and Warner are terrible, although they are sorely hampered by the script here, but they don’t have an ounce of Sutherland’s charisma and presence.

One of many films that fares better in your memory than it does on a full rewatch, The Puppet Masters is a lightweight bit of sci-fi horror entertainment. It just isn’t half as good as most of the films that adapt this kind of material.

6/10

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Entrapment (1999)

A blockbuster vehicle for Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones that hopes viewers are distracted enough by star power to overlook the sheer preposterousness of the plot, Entrapment isn’t a very good film, but it kind of works for what it wants to do.

Zeta-Jones is Gin, an insurance agent who becomes obsessed with catching the best in the business, Mac (Connery). She has been following his trail for a long time now, and she knows that she has a payday to tempt him. Mac is suspicious from the very beginning though, and so begins a wary dance of mistrust between them.

Directed by Jon Amiel, a man who spent a few years specialising in slick, forgettable, Hollywood product, Entrapment feels tailor-made for its stars. Writers Ronald Bass and William Broyles Jr. manage to play up the strengths of both, either deliberately or simply by writing a project that always aimed to have “charming male lead” and “sexy female lead” at the heart of it. 

Released in 1999, this felt dated within a year or two. The plot hinges on the millennium changeover, the age gap between Connery and Zeta-Jones felt like, even for Hollywood, it was stretching things a bit too far, and the most popular sequence (which I will highlight in the next paragraph) was shown again and again whenever the film was being discussed favourably.

Connery is allowed to be his roguish charming best, and he goes along with all of the nonsense with a wry grin and a twinkle in his eye, while Zeta-Jones works in his shadow, breaking out occasionally in sequences that gratuitously dwell on her classic beauty (case in point - the training sequence that has her contorting her body as she avoids “security lasers”). It is a fairly thankless role for her, but she acquits herself well enough to the task. Although the cast isn’t huge, there are also welcome performances from Ving Rhames and Will Patton, two great actors who earned some decent paychecks from this kind of fare while they were on the radar of the casting directors.

Compared to other con/caper movies in the same wheelhouse, this is pretty bad. Compared to the slick blockbusters of this time that put star power ahead of logic and plotting, many being Simpson and/or Bruckheimer productions, this is pretty bad. Compared to other films starring Connery or Zeta-Jones, well, they both have filmographies that fluctuate wildly in quality. Just accept the general badness of this anyway, and then allow yourself to enjoy it nonetheless. Because sometimes nonsense involving attractive a-list stars is enough to keep you entertained for an hour or two. And this still manages to entertain me, despite me knowing that it’s generally bad.

6/10

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Mubi Monday: Sweet Thing (2020)

Written and directed by Alexandre Rockwell, and utilising a number of his family members in the main cast, Sweet Thing is a bittersweet tale of childhood, mischief, and horrible abuse. The fact that the soundtrack makes use of music familiar to those who have seen True Romance is no surprise really, considering both films feature rather naive central characters who end up running away after striking back at an abuser. But the main characters here are children, which means that the big world around them is all the more dangerous, and it is a lot less likely that we will see this little group maintain their complete freedom.

Lana Rockwell is Billie, a teenager who is also the big sister to Nico (Nico Rockwell). The kids have a problematic father (Will Patton), an alcoholic who can barely look after himself most days, and end up staying with their uncaring mother, Eve (Karyn Parsons). Eve is with a partner, Beaux (M. L. Josepher), who doesn’t really want to be in the company of children. Things keep getting worse until one act of violence leads to Billie and Nico running away, meeting up with another youngster, Malik (Jabari Watkins), who is seeking escape.

Shot mostly in black and white, a stylistic choice that seems to reflect the simple worldview of the young characters, Rockwell makes good choices with the material here, considering what viewers see and what they don’t, and helps himself immensely by having his talented children more than up to the task of carrying the film on their young shoulders.

Aside from all of the talented Rockwell family involved, which includes Parsons (who is Rockwell’s wife and real-life mother of the two children), a good amount of praise deserves to be heaped upon the ever-reliable Patton. I always like seeing him in movies, but he is rarely used as well as he is here. Patton delivers a lovely performance as a father who is incapable of doing the best by his children, his head turned and his mind addled by the alcohol that has enslaved him. Watkins also shines in his supporting role, although everyone benefits from the light being reflected back from the young stars leading this film like they were born to do so.

Rockwell has been crafting a decent-sized filmography for just over thirty years now, and fans of independent cinema will probably love at least one of his films. Sweet Thing shows that he not only still has a great eye and talent, but he also has a family who are just as worthwhile keeping an eye on. I hope they all, whether together or separately, keep working in cinema.

8/10

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Halloween Kills (2021)

Here's a bit of a shocker. I wasn't a big fan of Halloween (2018). Despite my problems with it, however, it was impossible for me to deny that it was an attempt to set right a franchise that had so often gone off into choppy waters, to put it mildly. Halloween Kills is worse than the film that preceded it. The big surprise is that I think it is arguably worse than every film that preceded it. 

Following on immediately from the end of the previous film, Halloween Kills is the tale of Michael Myers getting out of a burning house and killing a whole load of people on his way to wherever he may want to be heading. Is that wherever Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is? Is it his childhood home? Is it somewhere he can face off against an angry mob who rally around the chant that "evil dies tonight"? Wherever it is, events are interrupted by numerous flashbacks to scenes that show the aftermath of that fateful night all those years ago. The night he came home.

David Gordon Green is back in the director's chair again, and he co-wrote the script with Danny McBride and Scott Teems (the former also returning to the same role he had on the last film). So let me start by saying what this film gets right. Entertaining scenes of mayhem and death. This feels like the Halloween movie with the biggest bodycount yet, and the kills have a decent mix of variety and brutality. Michael Myers is as unstoppable as ever when he's all revved up for a major killing spree. 

The other thing the film gets right is the score, making plenty use of classic music cues in the right places.

That's it. That's all this movie gets right, and that's why it manages to do what I thought was impossible, become a new low point for the series.

Now let's go through the many things that the film gets wrong. 

The cast. They're either not that good (Andi Matichak still fails to make much of an impression as young Allyson, granddaughter of the legend that is Laurie Strode), unceremoniously sidelined because they need to be held back for the next - final - instalment (Jamie Lee Curtis), or forced to make one bad decision after another on the way to an ending that treats them as badly as any minor supporting character. This applies to Judy Greer, Robert Longstreet, and Anthony Michael Hall, among others. The fact that Hall is playing Tommy Doyle, joined here by Lindsey Wallace (Kyle Richards reprising her role), makes the misuse of his character arguably more egregious than the misuse of any other characters.

The many nods to other movies that everyone wants to pretend doesn't exist in this timeline. This has been a pet peeve of mine before, but it's even worse this time when so many details seem to have been included for fans to point out as nods to previous visits to Haddonfield.

Leading on from the previous point, there is almost no scene in Halloween Kills that doesn't highlight either some dialogue, character, or scene from the 1978 movie. It makes up what feels like the majority of the runtime, and it's bloody infuriating. This is a film that shows a flashback of Michael Myers clambering over a car just to allow the film-makers to feel smug when they show a near-identical shot of Michael Myers clambering over a car. There is a big difference between dropping in references to please fans and making your film little more than a collage of those references.

The many scenes that are supposed to show the events of Haddonfield in the 1970s generally look well, but they are a) totally unnecessary, and b) full of choices made by people who wanted to recreate certain moments and characters without considering whether or not they should. This leads to intrusive camerawork and some terrible audio that can take viewers out of the movie.

Any commentary on trauma and mob mentality is undermined by the weak script. Why bring so many characters back if you’re only going to use them to make the same mistakes that everyone makes in these movies? They even mistake someone else for Michael Myers, which I think it the third or fourth time that idea has been used in these movies. There are individual moments that have characters showing how affected they have been by the night that terrified the entire town, but they are disappointingly brief. And none of the mob mentality stuff works, with no real feeling of “angry villagers with torches” ever coming close to actually causing a problem for the monster they want to drive away.

Halloween Kills has worked for a hell of a lot of people, and it seems to have been a big hit at the box office already, so you may end up at the opposite end of the spectrum from me. Some people have heard the film criticised and wondered what viewers were expecting. I’ll tell you. All this had to do was be true to the characters, true to the idea of making it a worthwhile story branching directly from the events of the original movie, and full of good kills. At least the kills are good. 

Sadly, any other film in the series manages to do what it sets out to do better than this, which even keeps our favourite scream queen so far away from most main scenes that it’s akin to watching a cut of Aliens re-edited to keep Ripley in stasis for most of the runtime.

Worst. Halloween. Ever. (so far)

4/10

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The Forever Purge (2021)

I've generally been a fan of The Purge movies, although it's quite telling that I can't really remember anything that happened in The First Purge (I'll have to rewatch it some day, but I cannot bring myself to do it just yet). The films have always been most fun when they blend the thrills and tension with unsubtle commentary on the class/wealth divide in America.

The Forever Purge, as the title suggests, depicts a world in which some people don’t want to leave the crime and killing to just one night a year. Emboldened by their activities, and finding others like themselves, a group of violent racists want to keep the ball rolling as they see a chance to purify America into their vision of a supreme nation.

Once again written by James DeMonaco, this time it is Everardo Gout directing. Gout does well when it comes to making the most of the budget, something this film series has generally done well with in every instalment, and he films the few small set-pieces well enough. The main problems come from DeMonaco’s script. More on that in a little while.

Cast-wise, the main characters are played by Ana de la Reguera, Tenoch Huerta, and Josh Lucas, none of the characters really stand out, certainly not for the right reasons. Every main character here is absolutely defined by their race and class, or their unpalatable attitude to people of different races and classes. And you have Will Patton being as good as he usually is, which makes it more annoying that he is onscreen for a mere few minutes of the screentime.

Unfortunately, nobody really gets a chance to do any decent work, hampered by the shallow characterisations and clumsy dialogue. What could have been a decent expansion of the movie world ends up weak and implausible, from the relations between the different characters to the way we are supposed to believe that gun-toting Americans would band together and help protect people from other gun-toting Americans. Sorry to say it, but recent events have shown what the general public, not just Americans by the way, will put up with if it keeps themselves safe and comfortable. 

None of this would be as hard to accept if the moments of vicious nastiness were more impactful, but they aren’t. What should have been a bleak and bloody adventure ends up as just a tame fantasy, limping along to an ending that feels like a groan-inducing punchline. Maybe they should be ready to call the next movie, as there IS going to be a next movie, The Final Purge.

4/10

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Netflix And Chill: The Devil Below (2021)

A near-perfect example of how not to make a creature feature, The Devil Below manages to be even worse than the first feature from this director, Chernobyl Diaries and a lot worse than almost every other movie I can think of that contains elements of this material.

The plot may be pretending to be worth you investing some time in, but it really isn’t. Ostensibly, a group looking to investigate a “lost” mining town/community believed to have disappeared into sinkholes some years ago, things start to get dangerous for everyone onscreen when some monsters start to drag people underground. Hence the title.

Written by Stefan Jaworski and Eric Scherbarth, The Devil Below at least has a half-decent creature at the heart of it. Unfortunately, you don’t really get a good look at the creature, with the decision made to blur the image and keep it only ever half-glimpsed. Outwith the creature action, the rest of the script weaves between dull and simply awful, with some of the worst scenes being unbelievable debates on ideas of science vs faith. This is obviously one point that the writers thought could be interestingly developed as things move towards the climax. It isn’t. The rest is too unoriginal, and not treated well enough, to find entertaining. Creatures using sound to hunt, locals being mean to outsiders in order to keep others safe, a third act that has one of the most obvious callbacks to an earlier moment shared between two of the main characters (seriously, if you don’t see it coming then shame on you), the only real fun here is seeing just how unengaging things can be for the entire runtime. 

Will Patton is the one star I recognised, and he is always welcome, but most of your time is spent in the company of Alicia Sanz, Adan Canto, Zach Avery, and some other people you won’t really care about. 

Although the script is at fault, director Bradley Parker should receive more of the criticism, because every decision he makes seems to work against the material (e.g. the shot choice when a creature is in frame). Parker seems to make every wrong choice possible, despite it being difficult to envision any version of this that plays out much better.

Not good, even for the most undemanding fans of creature features. I would even recommend many silly Asylum movies ahead of this one. At least they try to set out to keep boredom at bay. 

3/10

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Gone In 60 Seconds (2000)

A slick Bruckheimer-produced action movie from the year 2000, Gone In 60 Seconds is an easy film to dismiss when you think of some of the other bombastic vehicles he has put his name to (two of those, Con Air and The Rock, also starring Nicolas Cage). But it holds up really well for what it is, which is a fun 2-hour film with lots of nice cars being stolen.

Giovanni Ribisi is Kip Raines, a young man trying to steal a load of cars for a major criminal, Raymond Calitri AKA The Carpenter (Christopher Eccleston). He fails, which enrages The Carpenter. With a ticking clock, he arranges to get Kip's older brother, Memphis Raines (Cage), on the case. Memphis left that life behind a long time ago, but, as the life of his younger brother is on the line, he reluctantly puts a team together. That team includes 'Sway' (Angelina Jolie), Otto (Robert Duvall), and The Sphinx (Vinnie Jones, in a largely non-speaking role). The plan is to scope out the cars and grab all fifty in one night. That's a tough order, made even tougher by the two cops (Delroy Lindo and Timothy Olyphant) who sense something big about to go down.

Based on the 1974 movie by H. B. Halicki (I've not seen it, no idea how closely the two match up), Gone In 60 Seconds has a decent script by Scott Rosenberg and solid direction from Dominic Sena. They know the right level of passable implausibility to go for, and keep things moving in between nice car moments with some great exchanges of dialogue between characters (particularly any scene involving Lindo and Olyphant). And then, despite taking such a long time to get there, the cars get to shine when they're onscreen. Especially in the finale, involving a Shelby Mustang GT500 given the name "Eleanor". 

There are some good montage moments, a soundtrack that has some fantastic choices to accompany the visuals (The Chemical Brothers are on there, as are Apollo Four Forty, Moby, and War), and enough great stunt sequences to please most action movie fans, although they are sparingly spaced out throughout the third act.

Now let’s get to that cast. Cage has fallen out of favour in recent years. I am still a big fan, no matter where on the Cage spectrum of craziness his performance falls, and he became a surprisingly good action movie star once given a shot. The same, more or less, could be said of Jolie, who works very well here as the cool female really into her cars. Duvall, Jones, Scott Caan, Chi Mcbride, Scott Caan and all of the other crew members fit their roles perfectly, Ribisi gets to be slightly bratty, and Will Patton once again delivers some fine Will Patton-ness. Eccleston is the weak link, not as charismatic and intimidating a villain as he could be, but he’s okay. The bigger threat comes from the “heroes” being caught by the cops, headed up by Lindo and Olyphant, who complement one another brilliantly, making a very entertaining double act. 

Maybe not as rewatchable as some other movies in this vein, Gone In 60 Seconds is still a very fun ride, using a great ensemble cast to keep everything ticking over nicely before it finally puts the pedal to the metal.

7/10

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Mubi Monday: Meek's Cutoff (2010)

Bruce Greenwood is not Ethan Hawke. I wouldn't normally start a review by saying that, but I wouldn't normally watch a movie thinking that one character has been played by Ethan Hawke, only to find they were played by Bruce Greenwood. 

Greenwood plays Stephen Meek, a frontier guide who leads a wagon train through some arid countryside, taking everyone perilously close to a sticky end, due to the ongoing scarcity of food and water. Tensions grow when a Native American (Ron Rondeaux) is captured, with different members of the group trying different ways to get him to reveal information to them about the surrounding desert environment.

Directed by Kelly Reichardt, and written by her regular collaborator, Jonathan Raymond, Meek's Cutoff is an attempt to tell a very strange story from history in a way that allows for a different kind of Western. The end result is a mixed bag, a film that strives to avoid all of the moments that you’re used to seeing in the genre. That is no bad thing, not in and of itself, but the fact that it so defiantly gives viewers nothing recognisable also works against it. There’s no playfulness here, no major subversion, despite the exploration of the shifting power dynamic between Meek, the Native Smerican, and others in the group.

The cast all do good work, even if I thought Greenwood was Hawke (which is a compliment for this role, honest). Michelle Williams and Will Patton are the main couple who don’t immediately dance to the tune that Meek wants to play, which is probably well-advised as it becomes clear that he may not know as much as he claims to know. Shirley Henderson, Paul Dano, Zoe Kazan, and everyone else in the group does solid work, and Rondeaux is superbly stoic and ambiguous in his way of interacting with the others.

Do seek this out if you don’t mind a slow-paced film that features some top-notch actors giving superb, but unshowy, performances. But it is worth warning people who decide to check this out if they are after a revisionist Western. You could label it that way, but it is more simply classed as a historical drama that happens to take place in a location more commonly seen in Western movies, with people who sometimes look to settle disagreements with their guns. Sort of like a Western.

7/10

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Halloween (2018)

Horror fans. At heart, we're easily pleased, according to some anyway. And we're an optimistic lot, at least when it comes to films that aren't cynical remakes. Time and time again, we have been given assurances about remakes and reboots. This time they're going to get things right. It's going back to the spirit of the original. This will be a film for the fans. And that's what we were told with Halloween. Indeed, early word on the film was fantastic, and a lot of fans are very happy with it. I am just not too sure what they have seen in it that I have missed.

Here's the plot. When a couple of true-crime podcasters get to visit Michael Myers in the sanitarium that has been his home for forty years they do their best to get a reaction from him, seemingly to no avail. The podcasters then go to visit Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis returning to her iconic role), now living a sheltered existence, staying locked inside her own home, to the detriment of her relationship with her daughter (Karen, played by Judy Greer) and her granddaughter (Allyson, played by Andi Matichak). And it's only a short while from then until Michael *gasp* escapes and *shock* heads to find Laurie once again.

Okay, there's something off about Halloween that I can't put my finger on. Something to do with the way that those involved insisted it would work as a sequel to the original film, while ignoring all of the other movies that came along after it, yet not quite nailing a consistent tone throughout, not seeming to handle the manners of Michael correctly, and not managing to give fans a finale worthy of the wait. What should have been a potential last hurrah ends up instead being a bit of an eye-roll and a shrug.

Director David Gordon Green doesn't do a bad job when he allows himself time away from the main characters and plotting. That one tracking shot, shown in preview clips that were used to advertise the movie, is pretty great, allowing us to watch Michael mingle with unwitting trick or treaters as he wanders around and commits a couple of impressively short 'n' sharp kills. And there's a decent sequence that features a scared child and a babysitter who assumes that it's all down to imaginary terrors. Unfortunately, Green does worse with a number of scenes that seem to warp the characters for the sake of a fresh start in the series. The script, co-written by the director with Jeff Fradley and Danny McBride, has just as many silly moments as many of the other sequels it is so desperate to erase from the canon, and, worst of all, it doesn't do justice to the characters that deserve better treatment. Those characters would fare a lot worse if they weren't played by such good actors. And did I mention that everything is kicked off this time by true-crime podcasters? Yes, it may lack Busta Rhymes and webcams, but let's not pretend that this isn't as gimmicky and mistakingly attempting to be trendy in the same way as, oh, Halloween: Resurrection was. Things lift up when scenes don't feel like they're either reacting to trends or dishing up fan-service but, sadly, most of the film seems to be stuck in those two camps.

The cast help immensely, and it goes without saying that Curtis gives another great performance. Greer is good, although playing the overly-tense character that she's been stuck with many times before, and Matichak is a likeable younger potential final girl who could easily carry on the Strode legacy, as far as I'm concerned. The wonderful Will Patton is . . . wonderful, if sorely underused, in the role of Officer Hawkins, and Haluk Bilginer tries to fill a Loomis-shaped gap, but is let down by the writing in the second half. Virginia Gardner, Dylan Arnold, Miles Robbins, and Drew Scheid all do well as teens who may find themselves in peril, and Jefferson Hall and Rhian Rees are those pesky podcasters.

Is this a bad horror movie? No. There are some good kills, and an attempt to craft some iconic Myers moments. It just isn't a masterpiece, not in comparison to many other horror movies and not even in comparison to the preceding films that those involved view as lesser instalments in the series. A lot of the characters here do typically dumb stuff to get themselves in a position to be picked off, a number of moments feel like they bring the luggage of the other movies that have been ignored/discarded, and the ending doesn't feel true to the characters.

But that doesn't matter whenever Michael grasps hat knife handle and starts walking towards his next victim while that classic music plays. Because us horror fans, well, we're easily pleased sometimes. I know I am.

6/10

You can buy the movie here.
Americans can get it here.

Filmstruck Friday: After Hours (1985)

I didn't love After Hours when I first saw it. I think I was almost twenty, I didn't really get the tone of the film, and I loved it more for the fact that Scorsese directed it than the content of the film itself.  It's a spiralling nightmare that can make it hard to find the comedy until you are in a position to identify more with the central character, which is why I like it a lot more today.

You see, as much as I hate to say it, I have now had episodes that come close to the feeling I get while watching After Hours. I've had nights that have gone from bad to worse, as I make numerous unwise decisions to stay in the company of an attractive woman who was also a bit . . . whacky. I've had nights when I have lost my money and had a hell of a long journey home ahead of me. And I've had nights when the fun has stopped but I have somehow found myself somewhere, or in the company of someone, that feels quite dangerous. Treading carefully while drunk is always harder than doing so while sober.

But let's get to the film. Griffin Dunne plays Paul, a man who ends up out later than intended after he meets the lovely Marcy (Rosanna Arquette). One thing leads to another and Paul eventually finds himself in the company of an artist (Linda Fiorentino), a lonely and sad bar worker (Teri Garr), and, eventually, another artist (Verna Bloom). That's not to mention his temporary state of poverty, a suicide, a surprisingly helpful barman (John Heard), and a woman who seems to want to help him while simultaneously testing his last nerve at the same time (Catherine O'Hara).

Part of the pleasure of watching After Hours, and why I enjoyed it enough before identifying more with Dunne's character, is seeing this material handled by Scorsese. It has a number of his familiar directorial flourishes, a typically eclectic soundtrack, and benefits from his ability to make some of the darkest moments still seem entertaining. This is a film in which a man finds the corpse of someone who has committed suicide and then has to stick up signs pointing towards the dead body as he leaves the scene, after calling to inform the police.

The script by Joseph Minion helps a lot, bringing in plenty of memorable characters and plot elements that plague our lead more than once. Although the general feeling is one of chaos and madness, the script is very tightly put together, slotting various pieces together expertly and leading to an insane final sequence that serves as a brilliant punchline to the proceedings.

Dunne is wonderful in his role, but he's not left with the whole film on his shoulders. Everyone I have already mentioned above does great work. Many are absolutely right for their roles, but O'Hara and Garr are the real standouts. You also get fun cameos for Will Patton, Cheech Marin, and Tommy Chong.

If, like myself, you last watched After Hours before you recognised exactly how those nights can occur then I encourage you to give it a rewatch. Despite the title, this is not a film just about a late night out. It's about a state of mind.

8/10

I recommend buying this set.
Americans can get it here.